


your petals soft and torn

by Hitsugi_Zirkus



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Flowers, Introspection, Lead-in to Clear's Bad End, M/M, Obsession, Symbolism, Tragedy, slight body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15379374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hitsugi_Zirkus/pseuds/Hitsugi_Zirkus
Summary: Clear is torn down to his skeleton, again and again.





	your petals soft and torn

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for my beloved Kuma-chan <3 It has been much too long since I last got to write something for you. My scalpel is a bit rusty, but I hope this story is too your liking. I had a lot of fun coming up with possible symbolisms between Clear and the skeleton flower that you brought to my attention. This flower is very real, by the way, feel free to read up on it. The gist of it is that it is a small white flower whose petals grow transparent in the rain. Very nice, huh? ;) (I also read that blueberries grow from the same stems. BLUEberries? Aoba?? Clearao confirmed in nature once again.)

_"You are weathered and worn_  
_Your petals soft and torn_  
_The fading color_  
_You have bent your shoulders_  
_To hold the weight of the world_  
_You will surely shatter..."_

\-- "Magnolia," The Hush Sound

 

 

 

_The sound of white noise was coming from outside. He tilted his head right then left experimentally, making sure that nothing was wrong with his audio input. The white noise continued._

_“It’s rain,” the old man beside him said, and went to the window to pull back the worn lace curtain._

_He stepped towards the window slowly, curiosity pulling him forward like a magnet. Water droplets like tiny liquid crystals clung to the dusty glass panes, streaming down._

_“It’s rain,” the old man repeated for him._

_“Can I touch it? Does it hurt when it falls?” He craned his neck to look at the rolling grey clouds overhead. The sun he had just gotten used to seeing after endless cold starry nights was nowhere in sight._

_The old man chuckled. “It doesn’t hurt. But...you shouldn’t touch it. Clear… Your body isn’t meant to take the pouring rain. That’s why, if you go out when it’s raining, I want you to take this…”_

* * *

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that he was scrapped. It was different from Aoba’s Scrap, which flowed into him, waded through endless rows of data and circuitry, and found something substantial to gaze upon inside him. Something that was perhaps warm and beautiful. Something human-like.

But _this_ scrap…

_Zhhhh... Zzhhhh…_

Clear’s eyes flew open, the steady, quiet sound of white noise polluting his head. Popping sparks followed, tiny electric shocks of pain shooting through his torn circuitry. Panic seized him and he shot up, finding himself on top of pile of what looked like junk -- busted hardware, frayed wires… But the closer Clear looked, the more recognizable the shapes became -- plating carefully crafted into limbs, crumpled bits of synthetic flesh…

Pale broken faces. Pink eyes, shattered and dislodged from their sockets.

With a sick lurch in his stomach, Clear realized that he was in a graveyard for androids, his own series...and he was the newest addition to this morbid metal carnage.

Well, it was no wonder he was here then -- his body was beaten in and torn to ribbons. He ran some quick diagnostics, but his vision was already flooded with blaring red warning signs, indicating that visual interfacing in his right eye was severely damaged along with the audio in his right ear. It made moving awkward, like a splintered marionette with no strings.

Sparks shot from his neck and Clear gasped, clutching the wound there. Dark oil stains were splattered all over his clothes, and the memories finally re-played. Oval Tower, Toue, the Alphas -- _Aoba_.

Clear pushed forward with a pained cry, tumbling down the pile of busted androids until he reached the oil-sticky ground. The dumping ground for broken units laid within Oval Tower at the end of the research area, nothing more than a glorified steel garbage bin.

Clear knew this, because he’d already been dumped here once before.

_Zzhhh… Zhhhh…_

The buzzing didn’t stop as he moved sluggishly along, glancing into heaps of limbs and faces for any sign of blue hair or terrified whispers of his name. It was an impossible chance. Clear knew well that Aoba had been taken by Toue and the Alphas, and was probably being cruelly experimented on at that very moment.

The thought of that, coupled with the heavy weight of his utter failure, felt like it crushed Clear worse than any physical blow. In the end, it had been as Toue said -- he was a failed unit.

 _And a failed human_ , he thought, staring down at his stained hands, his tattered forearm that had been unable to keep his precious person close. _Aoba-san…_ _I failed you… I failed to protect you… Why was I not strong enough to keep my promise!? I had believed that if my feelings were true, then surely I would’ve been able to save you._

_Was it perhaps that my feelings weren’t enough?_

Now he took a glance at the other destroyed androids, still and soulless, nothing more than metal husks. What was the difference between him and them?

_Did I...not have any to give you in the first place? I was made by Toue, after all. If I came from such a man, then perhaps it was useless from the start to think I could one day have something more inside me._

His breath quivered, the weakness in his body making his legs shake with each step. Eventually, he couldn’t support himself anymore, and he crumpled to his knees. He tried to get back up, but the damage only increased the more he pushed himself. Another spark flew, this time somewhere within his metal ribcage.

“Aoba-san…”

He could still hear it so clearly -- the sharp, desperate cry of his name tearing from Aoba’s lips.

_When he Scrapped me, he trusted me to save him. He let me make my own decisions, to let me follow what I felt -- he allowed me to be a human with free will. And yet I…_

_“Get up, Clear! Clear! Please!”_

Clear jolted up to his feet with one last mighty push. Uncaring of the broken parts that cracked, the oil that spilled, the electric shocks through his system, he stumbled between the artificial corpses around him and towards the single steel door at the edge of the room. As soon as he was close enough, he beat his fists against it.

“LET ME OUT!” he yelled. “LET ME OUT! AOBA-SAN!!” He tried digging his fingers into the crevice of the door but it didn’t budge a centimeter. Instead, his fingers bent, one of them snapping. Clear yelled in agony, but not from the pain of his body, and bashed his fists uselessly against the door again.

“AOBA-SAN! _AOBA-SAN!_ ” His voice took a cracked, glitchy edge, his screams furthering the damage to his jugular until it reached his voice box. Oil spurted out from his abused hands, the knuckles cracking under the impact. His vision blurred, something wet streaking down his cheeks, melting away the skin it touched.

Clear cursed. Cursed himself for not being strong enough, for breaking down like he was made of glass. He’d been created to be superior to humans and _yet…_

The door suddenly slid open. Clear might’ve believed that only a mirror was on the other side if it weren’t for the fact that his “reflection” was in pristine condition and was wearing a smile more cruel than he could ever manage.

“So you’re alive after all, _Nii-san_ ,” Alpha sneered. “What a surprise.”

With a cry, Clear ran forward, fist raised. He faltered before even taking two steps, his legs giving out from under him. Alpha smirked.

“Well, only _barely_ alive, I suppose.” His foot reached out, his heel pressing into Clear’s forehead and forcing him to look up. The pressure made Clear gasp, and a small rod in his neck snapped. “I don’t know what Toue still sees in you that he’d still want to preserve you, but I guess that refusal to go down _is_ admirable.” Alpha’s smile grew wider.

“Come on, Nii-san. Let’s get you fixed up.”

* * *

He was restrained with special handcuffs that wouldn’t come undone without a certain code. They were hardly necessary -- Clear was too weak to even raise his arm, much less break out of these chains. Alpha had to basically drag his body from the disposal area and up to the repair hall. He tsked every time Clear bled onto the blinding white marble floor.

“You’re such a mess. What a waste of space. You’re an old model anyway and now you’re literally _junk_. Toue is being too generous with you, so you better be grateful that he’s decided to fix you and reprogram you.”

Clear closed his eyes; the hallways were too white, too bright. It hurt to look at them for too long. “Re...pROgrAm…?” His broken voice sounded far away in his ears.

Alpha grinned. “We have to get rid of those pesky bits in your data that make you defective.”

The word buzzed in Clear’s head, bringing him back to the day he’d first been scrapped. _Defective_ , the researchers called him. Had there ever been a reason for that? He never quite figured out what part of him wasn’t up to performance standards. He thought he’d been built in Toue’s perfect image the first time -- who was to say that after this sick little game that Clear wouldn’t be tossed aside as a failure for a third time, this time for good?

“I’m... _noT_ deFEctiVe,” he murmured. If he had the strength, he’d shove Alpha away. Instead he balled his hands into hard fists until the oil saturated his gloves faster. “ANd I’m... _NOt_ BEing REprOgrAMmeD. AoBA-san...gAve Me thIS freE Will...THis loVe...aNd YOu...wiLL _nOT_ taKe iT.”

Without missing a beat, Alpha sighed. “That’s exactly the kind of unnecessary garbage I’m talking about, Nii-san.”

* * *

The process wasn’t quick, nor was it painless. Researchers came in and out of his little room where he was strapped down to a steel table, looking at him with a mix of amusement and disgust. He supposed that he _was_ an anomaly among the androids -- he was the one that broke out of the Jail, the broken doll that lived as an individual, the deviant that defied Toue and his own kind with his own unpredictability.

They studied his data in and out, cracked him open deeper and deeper until there was nothing to hide, until every wire and chip was exposed, until all the neon glowing screens of his network flooded the room, and he was awake for all of it. It was painful, invasive, and Clear could feel whatever humanity he learned slowly chip away as he was reduced to a science project once more.

Clear wondered what the researchers found. They wrote on their clipboards and whispered amongst themselves, but Clear never knew what they found by deconstructing him circuit by circuit. They looked into him but did not see him. A sick, mixed feeling of being unseen and yet completely exposed grew somewhere inside him.

By the time reconstruction began, Clear was hanging onto the last frayed wire of reason, and it unraveled a little more with each second spent in the tiny white room.

All through his torment, as they disassembled his body, the only thing keeping him from short-circuiting and shutting down was Aoba. Clear needed to see him. He needed to save him. He needed to prove that something had existed between them, that his feelings weren’t mere fabrications like everything else about him.

_Aoba-san saw me. Aoba-san knew what was inside me. He’ll tell me. If I find him and ask, he’ll tell me that something was there after all…_

_Please, Aoba-san…_

_I’m right here…_

* * *

Halfway through reconstruction, Clear finally bided his time long enough to escape. He waited for when the skin grafts were being placed over his new arms before knocking out the researchers in the room and tumbling into the hallway.

He was dizzy and disoriented, his mind still working slowly; the reprogramming hadn’t begun yet, but certain chips in his main hardware had been removed. His legs, new and yet to be used, moved stiffly and groaned in protest as he tried to break them into a run. His movements were clumsy, blind, every hallway looking the same.

He called for Aoba, but received no answer. No matter how much he tried increasing the radius or changing the frequency of his audio input, he couldn’t hear him. Where was he? Surely Aoba still had to be in the Tower, Toue wouldn’t dispose of him.

 _Why can’t you hear my voice? Please, I’m here, I’m right here!_ Every door he tried had a security lock and no windows. Everything was white and the same, the color mirrored on his own skin and hair.

Just when Clear was reaching the end of his rope, the gears of his new body already worn out, he reached the end of a hall, where the very last door slid open.

Clear stumbled through, and the white world melted away.

The glowing neon interior of Platinum Jail opened up in its glittering splendor before him. He was on a small balcony more than halfway up the well-lit Tower, a surprising development in its otherwise unique utilitarian design.

A white noise filled his ears, followed by a damp, misty scent that chased away the sterile stench of antiseptic, oil, and plastic gloves he’d been surrounded by for days.

A sheer, dazzling curtain of water surrounded him and all of Platinum Jail, wetting his hair and half-bare body. He jumped at the sensation.

A drop landed on his eyelashes and he blinked.

 _Rain_.

It felt like it had been centuries since he last experienced it. The last time… The last time had been with Aoba. When Aoba had accepted him wholly. When he told Aoba he loved him. Their first kiss was under the fall of rain just like this, mixing with the taste of Aoba’s lips. The memory seemed so far away now, like a dream.

Clear stood there, mystified by the sensation of the water falling down his skin. In Platinum Jail, where everything was artificial, the sky did not turn grey, and thunder didn’t thrum under his skin and tickle the electric wiring in his brain. The rain simply streamed down from the stars.

_“If you go out when it’s raining, I want you to take this…”_

Clear blinked, slowly patting over himself. His old clothes had been stripped away from him like everything else, leaving him in just a pair of pants identical to the Alphas’. His overlarge coat was gone, as were the contents of its roomy pockets -- countless little knick-knacks, his masks, his knife...and the well-loved transparent umbrella that his grandpa had given him. He’d given it to Clear to keep him safe from the rain. Why was that again?

_“You shouldn’t touch it. Clear… your body…”_

His body...was not made for the rain. He didn’t think he understood it at the time, but now, when he had full awareness again of what exactly he was, he could make guesses. Machines didn’t do well in water. But back then, he simply took his grandpa’s words at face-value, and thus he brought out  his umbrella everytime he went outside to protect himself from potential rain.

And yet… The water was... _refreshing_ on his skin. Clear glanced up to the constructed cosmos above him, losing himself to the sound and smell and _feel_ of the rain dancing down his body.

Their fall reminded him of something...of someone.

Yes. They reminded him of Aoba’s tears, the ones he shed when Clear crumpled to the ground in a busted heap, when he was dragged behind the heavy white doors.

_Aoba-san… Are you crying even now? I thought...if my love were enough...then surely I’d be by your side right now, that we’d both be together and happy. I thought my love was strong enough to protect you._

The rain started to feel like it was weighing him down. His new skin, only partially grafted, started to wrinkle, saturated with water.

 _Ah_ , he thought. _Grandpa said that my body can’t handle the rain. But maybe… There is more that this body isn’t compatible with._

_“Love”... Is my body not meant to hold it after all? That has to be because there is nothing inside me to see after all. In the end, there was nothing I could give Aoba-san._

_But… Aoba-san_ did _see something, didn’t he?_ Hadn’t Aoba been receptive when Clear opened up to his own fears about death, about his face, about what he was? Hadn’t Aoba thanked him for his love, accepted his kiss? Hadn’t he stared right into Clear’s being through his eyes, hadn’t he Scrapped Clear?

Wasn’t that enough to have a heart?

The weight of the rain finally tore his skin open, peeling it back like it was nothing more than tissue paper. Clear paid it no mind, watching as his cold skeleton was revealed once more.

He’d seen this phenomenon before.

_It had been one rainy day, the downpour heavier than Platinum Jail’s, the scent of the earth perfuming the air. Clear had been at the outskirts of the Northern District, near the woods, his umbrella covering his head from the rain._

_He’d woven through the trees, singing to himself, when his boots brushed the edge of a patch of flowers. He’d only noticed them because they were so white, just like him, a bright spot on an otherwise grey day._

_But as Clear stopped to admire them, he noticed that same whiteness slowly begin to melt away. One by one, the petals of the small flowers grew lighter then completely transparent, their yellow centers and white veins the only sign that they were there at all._

_Their shape made them look like tiny versions of his umbrella, but the flowers were catching the rain instead of warding it off. Their delicate petals seemed to have become one with the rain, as if they were birthed from it in the first place._

_Clear had been utterly blown away by this show of magic -- at least, he was convinced it was. He’d plucked a few of the flowers and dashed home to show his grandpa. By the time he’d burst through the doors of their dilapidated home in excitement, the flowers had started to regain their white hue._

_Skeleton flowers, his grandpa had called them. When it was dry, the tiny flowers were quite ordinary. But once the nurturing rain fell, their petals, so thin and delicate, would turn clear with the absorption of the water._

_“They turn clear,” Clear had repeated, a smile growing under his mask. “Are they just like me then, Grandpa? Did you name me thinking of this flower?”_

_“Not exactly,” his grandpa had laughed. “But… I guess you could say that it’s a suitable friend for you.”_

_Clear grew happy, lightly tracing the petals with his fingertips. They stood out on the porch, and he extended his flower out to catch the droplets of rain. The white melted away once more, the flower growing transparent, but somehow looking even more vibrant._

_“I want you to become just like this, Clear,” his grandpa continued quietly.  “Become just like this…”_

Chunks of his skin plopped wetly onto the ground. Along his arms and shoulders, his chest and the right side of his face, the skin tore away from the rain. His metal frame became more and more exposed, his literal skeleton.

Was he not “clear” enough yet?

_Maybe Aoba-san hasn’t given me enough. How can I become like that flower if Aoba-san doesn’t love me too, doesn’t give me “rain”?_

_I need to make my feelings stronger. I need to convey it properly to him. Aoba-san must know how much he means to me -- after that, he will surely come to be mine, right?_

Was his skin breaking down him fading away once more...or finally being seen? For an android, did such a thing even exist? The artificial layers peeled back and when Clear was finally exposed, he looked down at the intimidating caged network of his insides, and found nothing inside it.

_Until he sees only me. Loves only me. I need to look deeper inside Aoba-san -- until there’s nothing left to hide._

_Then I can have my heart._

A strange resolve filled the recesses in Clear’s body. His head felt funny. Was it the result of his chips being removed? His logic felt all over the place, and yet no other decision had been more clear in his life. He understood perfectly what he had to do to be that skeleton flower that his grandpa had wished him to be.

He would not hide anymore. He didn’t need an umbrella over his head just the same as he no longer needed a mask for his face. He would accept the downpour, until he could feel himself drown in it.

The door behind him opened. Clear turned, seeing Alpha standing right beside him with an unimpressed look on his face.

Alpha, his mirror image with his face and body, was perfectly opaque. Just like this tower, just like the rushing sound of his circuits being reprogrammed, sounding just like the rain outside.

A beautiful

impenetrable

 _white_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Aoba-san… Wait for me._

 

_(The clarity was there, as reflective as the silver surface of the scalpel that danced down Aoba’s skin, carving him open, until Clear could see everything.)_

 

_I’m sure together, the both of us will come to understand...what it is to finally reach the bare bones of our heart._

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to focus on several things while making this fic. The main point was to mark the symbolism between Clear and the skeleton flower and there ended up being a lot of interesting ways to look at it. I mostly wanted to point out what kind of feelings could spring forth from being "clear" (like the transparency of the flower, not having anything hidden; this in conjunction with Clear continuously having his insides torn open or Aoba Scrapping him). Clear being forcibly exposed brings a feeling of invisibility, just another soulless android among hundreds VERSUS Clear opening up at his own pace because Aoba's love has washed away the "opaque, pure white" nature of a nameless android and made him "clear," a transparent heart that catches the light.
> 
> Things like "love" and "pain" nourish a heart like rain nourishes a flower. Clear believes being exposed to more of Aoba's love will make him more humanlike. Since this fic is a lead-in to Clear's Bad End, this idea becomes twisted and obsession is born. Now Clear wants Aoba to pour his love nowhere else but inside him. This in turn breaks down Aoba, makes him fade away. Ironically, the pain of this, when Aoba can give no indication of loving Clear, is what makes Clear shed a tear at the end of his Bad End. That sadness gives a glimpse to a clear, human heart -- but far too late. 
> 
> I honestly feel like I could write a 20 page paper on this, this isn't even half the symbolism I wanted to explain. Look what you did, Kuma-chan.


End file.
